A few words to those who may embark again in this good cause.
1. It is best to begin as you can hold out. A great meeting, a vast roll of by-laws, a regiment of officers, a parade of speeches, these make a fine meeting, and that’s all. Let a few stanch friends to improvement put their heads and hands together, without show or noise; begin at the little end, and hold fast what is gained.
2. In choosing officers, societies almost invariably steer upon one rock on which thousands have split. There is a desire to put great men into offices, to get their influence. In a mere public meeting of a day, this is well enough; but in a society which is to exist by efficient labor, it is suicide. Such men like to be puffed and published as presidents, chairmen, etc., etc., but that ends the matter. They go away and are not seen again till the next annual meeting, when, lo! a resurrection takes place; and they flame again, a whole year’s zeal exhibited in one day. It is best to select officers, who are well broken, of a good strain of blood, and who pull steadily, on hard ground, in the mud, over bridging, or upon turnpikes. In this way we may not have quite so large a show, but we shall have a steadily growing and efficient society.
3. In the award of premiums, more or less of dissatisfaction will always be felt. A man who has worked a whole year for a premium cannot be expected to lose it without some pain. Premiums should be awarded with great care, with scrupulous impartiality, and every effort made by the leading, substantial farmers to soothe and keep down everything like bitterness and faction, in consequence of disappointment.
4. It is indispensable that agricultural papers should go hand in hand with agricultural societies. We will venture to say, that no society will long exist prosperously, which does not have a reading membership; and that a society can hardly fail to prosper if its members are regular readers of agricultural papers.
SHIFTLESS TRICKS.
To let the cattle fodder themselves at the stack; they pull out and trample more than they eat. They eat till the edge of appetite is gone, and then daintily pick the choice parts; the residue, being coarse and refuse, they will not afterwards touch.
To sell half a stack of hay and leave the lower half open to rain and snow. In feeding out, a hay knife should be used on the stack; in selling, either dispose of the whole, or remove that which is left to a shed or barn.
It is a shiftless trick to lie about stores and groceries, arguing with men that you have no time, in a new country, for nice farming—for making good fences; for smooth meadows without a stump; for draining wet patches which disfigure fine fields.